Sat Jul 28 10:43:00 EAT 2018

Married to gay man for years

Jessica shares her story with the reporter. Photo by Ivan Kimbowa.

By Moses Muwulya

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“He would have slept with all the women in town but not with fellow men…,” Jessica, not real names, tearfully tells her curious mother, who had earlier insisted that she return to her husband, no matter what had forced her to leave him.

But upon hearing this heartbreaking deception, her mother supported her, telling her to leave the spouse, who had made a fool of her.

For the eight years she had been married to Isaac, not real name, Jessica did not know that her husband was “someone’s wife” and the “wife” was jealous, of him having another wife.

Although there had been a rumour about a year ago that he was gay, she had just ignored it.The 25-year-old simply treated it as unhealthy rivalry from business competitors in the events decoration business in one of the Masaka town suburbs.

Because the father of her two children; a girl and a boy aged six and two respectively, had earned trust as a staunch Christian, singing in a church choir and always attending daily morning prayers, Jessica could barely think of the possibility of her husband sleeping with fellow men.

Her shocking discoveryOne morning, Isaac who was exceedingly protective of his phone, forgot it at home, giving her a chance to check it.

But his conversation on WhatsApp gave her enough answers as to why he never wanted her to access his cell phone, even for a second.

“In the WhatsApp audios, a man who he had saved in his contacts as Precious, was accusing Isaac, of cheating on him with other men, yet he was giving him everything, ranging from clothes and taking him out to posh hotels in Kampala”

That is when she got to know that the stylish shirts and trousers that Isaac brought home whenever he went to Kampala to buy decoration materials, were gifts from “his husband”, although he kept lying to her that a certain woman who fancied him was the one buying him clothes all in the name of love. Owing to her deep trust in him, she accepted the explanation, cautioning him not to fall prey to her.

As she listened to threads of conversation, more shocking evidence came up. The same man was bitterly accusing Isaac of having a wife in Masaka, something he was not willing to tolerate.

“My husband tenderly apologized, assuring him he would soon divorce me. He told me he just wanted to have children with me and now that he got them, he was just devising means of separating with me. This filled me with grief,” Jessica miserably recountsAlthough she initially blamed herself for checking his phone, she later valued it.

“I got to know the truth ever since hearing rumours that my husband was gay. In fact it gave me an impression that he forgot it intentionally to let me know about it,”But because of the deep love she had for her man whom she had even introduced to her parents and now planned to walk down the aisle, Jessica gave him the benefit of doubt and when he returned from Kampala with clothes as the norm was, she did not show signs of disappointment.

“I just calmly welcomed him back and asked him how he came to forget his cellphone. I wanted more solid evidence in order to come to a final decision,” she relates.

By coincidence, hardly two days later, a young man called Jessica telling her that her husband was trying to seduce him into homosexuality.

Jessica says she simply hang up on the man but he called back seeking to meet him and give her recorded audios of her man proposing to take him out.

“He told me that he was buying him chips, on top of giving him money, all in the name of luring him into homosexuality, ” the boy told Jessica.

“I wanted to make a decision after establishing the gospel truth, and what marked the end of my investigations is when I tricked him to have anal sex and he quickly welcomed the idea.”She says when she asked him whether he was gay, the man seemed unafraid and quickly admitted it, saying she was stupid not to have known it.

After separationJessica’s husband has since hidden the children from their mother.Although he would not hurt her, she says he tells their older daughter to hate their mother because she left them and married another man. “It hurts that I cannot disclose to them the reason for divorce. Isaac is now openly gay and wears feminine clothes.

Missed signs Jessica’s husband denied her conjugal rights for about three months with chronic claims of being tired.

“Hardly did I know that he was not tired but just did want to have sex with a woman”She says he used to bring back clothes whenever he travelled to Kampala but always wondered why he could not buy any for his family.

At one point, she says, Isaac had kidney problems and spent a lot of her money on medical bills for treating an ailment she believes was caused by the men he slept with.